Tag: Tennessee Titans

Categories
From My Seat Sports

Our Titans!(?)

Here we go, Titans, here we go! Right? Well … not so fast.

An NFL team representing Tennessee — the state in which Memphis has long lived — is one win away from playing in the Super Bowl. So naturally, those of us in the Bluff City will find a Derrick Henry jersey or at least some shade of blue when the Titans face the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday for the AFC championship. Or will we? The Titans call Nashville home, of course, however they choose to present “Tennessee” on team merchandise. Nashville and Memphis share a home in much the same way Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier once (actually three times) shared a boxing ring. So might red be the color of choice this Sunday, support leaning toward a team — the Kansas City Chiefs — a half-century removed from its last Super Bowl appearance?

Herewith, a case for Memphians to root against the Titans this weekend … and a case for full support of “Tennessee’s team.”

• Titans down!
If you’re old enough to remember the 1997 Tennessee Oilers, you’re as likely to wear a Patrick Mahomes jersey this weekend and pull for the Chiefs as you are to don Titans gear. Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams departed Texas for Tennessee after the 1996 season when taxpayers wouldn’t fund a new stadium for the franchise he founded in 1960, longtime tenants of the Astrodome. Trouble was, it would take a couple of years for Nashville to build that swanky new coliseum. So Adams convinced Memphis mayor Willie Herenton (among others) to let his team play two seasons in the Liberty Bowl. Memphis would pay for dinner but let someone else take its date home.

Those ’97 Oilers went 8-8 and featured a pair of rising stars in quarterback Steve McNair and running back Eddie George. But Memphis saw through the artificial wooing of Adams and didn’t even take a seat for that dinner. Tennessee drew the smallest crowds in the NFL that season, selling an average of 28,028 tickets for its eight home games. (The next-lowest total was the Atlanta Falcons: 46,928.) The most popular sports brand in America got a collective “who gives a s*^t” from Memphis. If “Tennessee’s team” wasn’t ours playing at the Mid-South Fairgrounds, you think they’re our team today? This is Cowboys country, Saints country. Hell, this is Falcons and Steelers country before Titans territory. The most famous player in Titans franchise history is Earl Campbell, and he never carried a football in the state of Tennessee.

• Titan up!
An informal survey of Memphians among my Twitter community yielded a lot of support for the Titans (“they’re not the Nashville Titans”), with skeptics interrupting (often with a mention of Adams, who died in 2013). There’s something to be said for regional support of a pro franchise. Six states claim the New England Patriots as their own, and those are merely the geographically connected. (Wouldn’t matter if they were the “Boston Patriots.” Maine loves the Red Sox. Vermont adores the Bruins.) The fact is, the Titans are the closest NFL team to Memphis (and this would be the case were we on the west side of the Mississippi River and called Arkansas home). Someone can wake up in Midtown on a Sunday morning, be seated for a noon kickoff in Nissan Stadium, and be home in time for 60 Minutes. (Yes, this person would need radar protection, but it could be done.)

The Titans have never won the Super Bowl. They are one of eight franchises that have played since the dawn of the Super Bowl era (1966) without winning a championship. These are underdogs, and what’s more Memphis than that? The team’s logo features the three stars representing each region of the Volunteer State, and symbolism matters, especially in sports. Finally, we need a team to pull for on Super Sunday. The nachos taste better, the commercials are funnier, and the halftime show goes by quicker. I’ll leave the final word to one of my Twitter pals, a man who understands the NFL landscape in 2020 better than most. Says Chuck Rogers (@ourpoppy), “Any team that beats the Patriots is worthy of my support.”

Categories
Memphis Gaydar News

Tennessee Equality Project: Titans and Ranked Choice Voting

Want to watch a Tennessee Titans home game and support the LGBTQ community? Well, now you can.

This year, the Titans will give $10 of each ticket sold on select home games to the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP). But there is a bit of work you have to do first.

When you’re buying your tickets, visit the Titans’ fundraiser site first. Select your game (Patriots and Steelers in the pre-season!) and enter the code “TEP” at checkout.

Actor Jennifer Lawrence in a 2018 ad in support of ranked choice voting in Tennessee.

TEP will also host a discussion in Memphis about Ranked Choice Voting.

Voters approved the voting method in 2008 but it was not implemented. Voters approved the method, again, in 2018. But its implementation is stymied by state officials and a pending lawsuit. Officials don’t believe the issue will be resolved in time for the citywide elections here in October.

The TEP event will feature a ranked-choice-voting ballot demonstration from Aaron Fowles of Ranked Choice Voting Tennessee. Basically, Fowles will show attendees just how a ballot would look (and how you’d use it) if ranked choice voting were approved here.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Puck, Yes?

CREDIT: Reuters | USA Today Sports

I’d like to extend hearty congratulations to our friends in Nashville for the accomplishments of their professional hockey team. Even without a championship trophy, for the lowest-seeded team to defy probability and conventional wisdom is worth celebrating. I watched more of the Comey hearing than the NHL Playoffs, but I hear it was a hell of a run. Of course, there’s nothing as satisfying as winning it all, but proving people wrong and upsetting the Understood Order of Things is pretty fun. It’s sustained us Grizzlies fans for a few years now.

Rallying a community behind a team is fun, too. There’s an electricity in the air that everyone can feel. It intoxicates even non-sports fans and turns them into diehards, if only for a few weeks. It takes an extra special kind of success to captivate a city in which ice is known more as something you put in your sweet tea than a surface for skating.

It’s impressive. I suspect it’s also the reason Predators mania hasn’t exactly set Memphis ablaze. The only thing setting this city ablaze is the oppressive heat, and the fact that “winter” sports are still being played in this hemisphere in June feels like a slap in the face. Or maybe that’s just the humidity. I’m sure lots of Memphians rooted for the Predators, but there weren’t enough for Memphis to crack the top 10 TV markets for any of the Stanley Cup final games. Memphis has, however, consistently ranked in the top 10 for NBA Finals viewership. Even during the massive power outage. The Grizzlies’ season ended nearly two months ago.

Two years ago, I wrote that it was time to stop comparing Memphis and Nashville. The unique experiences of a Grizzlies game versus a Predators game neatly illustrate the cities’ different personalities and how they don’t always make sense to each other. Take, for example, the tradition of throwing catfish onto the ice. How do the fish enter the arena? Does security look the other way, or do fans smuggle the seafood in their pants and purses? If the latter, how does one — you know what, nevermind. I don’t need to know.

Reuters | USA Today Sports

Catfish on ice

From country singers and catfish to wrasslin’ and “Whoop That Trick,” our sports traditions are, like our general civic vibes, different. Yet the question keeps popping up: Why doesn’t Memphis support the Predators?

Uh, why should we? Because we’re in the same state? What if we don’t know a single thing about hockey because we live in Tennessee, specifically the part of Tennessee where Ball Is Life?

Instead of pinning Memphis’ perceived disinterest to hatred or jealousy of Nashville’s success, remember that many of us did set aside our saltiness to root for the Titans in the Super Bowl back in the year 2000, long before Nashville became Smashville. And then consider that this is a city that shuts down at the mere threat of snow. Last year an ice skating rink closed because of winter weather. So excuse us if we’re a little slow to hop on the honky tonk Zamboni. After all, this is the South. Like a lot of things in Nashville (for better or worse), hockey is a transplant. Just as the first generation of “lifelong” Memphis Grizzlies fans is coming of age, hockey’s legacy in Nashville is still taking root. Give it time.

Maybe someday instead of a Grizzlies/Predators cross-promotion concocted by their cable broadcast station, “Team Tennessee” will represent a shared attitude between the two biggest cities in the state. The pettiness is fun, but there are bigger fish to throw. Like the jock and the nerd in a high school movie, it’s time for Memphis and Nashville to discover the only way they can outwit the principal is by setting aside their differences and working together.

I’m not sure which city plays each role in this metaphor, but the upcoming statewide election is one example of an opportunity to team up and save the school. Governor Haslam isn’t eligible for a third term. It’s early yet, but four people have declared their candidacy. One is Mae Beavers, whom you may recall as the author of the anti-porn resolution and assorted other terrible bills. We don’t have to love each other’s sports teams, and we soon won’t even have to share an IKEA anymore. But can we at least join forces to ensure Tennessee won’t be run by a bunch of monsters? That seems like a good start.

Jen Clarke is an unabashed Memphian and a digital marketing strategist.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

Tennessee: Planet Football

CREDIT: Frank Murtaugh

Frank Murtaugh

Football is alive and well in the state of Tennessee. As though this needed verification, I gave myself to America’s favorite spectator sport last week, soaking up the experience at three distinct levels — high school, college, and the NFL — in four days. Following are the lingering impressions, the sounds of whistles and colliding shoulder pads still echoing in my ears.

• Last Thursday, along with more than 45,000 fans (almost all of them wearing blue), I watched from the Liberty Bowl press box as the Memphis Tigers won a game that may prove to be the most significant in the program’s history. Surely you know the details by now: Memphis 53, Cincinnati 46. Eleven lead changes, 12 touchdowns, more than 1,300 yards of combined offense from the teams picked to win their divisions of the American Athletic Conference. All in front of a national TV audience thanks to 12 ESPN cameras.

Frank Murtaugh

The most significant win in Tiger history? If the University of Memphis aspires to be a member in one of college football’s Power Five leagues, it must develop a national impression as a “football school.” Define this however you will, it’s a far cry from any impression the U of M has made on the country . . . until Thursday night. The Tigers are 4-0 and have won a school-record 11 consecutive games. Should they beat USF this Friday (and they’ll be favored), they’ll host mighty Ole Miss on October 17th in what could be a battle of undefeated Mid-South teams, each eyeing a New Year’s Six bowl game. It just keeps getting better under fourth-year coach Justin Fuente (now 21-20 on the Tiger sideline). Memphis a football school? We’re getting there.

• Friday night, I went to the Fairgrounds to take in the White Station-Bartlett game. (Disclosure: My daughter is a junior outfielder for the Spartan softball team. I had rooting interest.) There’s a corny charm about high school football under the lights, even in a city the size of Memphis. Fans (read: families) of one team sit on one side of the field, fans of the opponent occupying bleachers on the other side. Cheerleaders do their thing in front of the student section, right next to the school band, every member counting the minutes till halftime and their turn in the spotlight. The p.a. announcer takes time to inform the crowd a car in the parking lot has its lights on.

As for the football, it’s charmingly small. Many linemen barely clear 200 pounds. The kicking games are a shallow imitation of what you see in college stadiums. (Every punt is in danger of being blocked, and a 35-yard field-goal attempt is a stretch.) There are no names on the back of uniforms. (“Number 9 for the Panthers is shifty once he gets through the line of scrimmage.”) A week after scoring six touchdowns, Spartan star receiver Dillon Mitchell didn’t play, apparently nursing a minor injury suffered in practice. (Another charm: No one seemed to know exactly why the star player was sidelined.) White Station won, 17-0, to improve to 4-2 on the season. As the crowd left around 9:30 (12-minute quarters are glorious), the win seemed to mean everything. Come Saturday, life’s distractions would return.

• I grew up a Dallas Cowboys fan, and did not attend a single “Tennessee Oilers” game during the one-season layover (1997) the NFL had in Memphis. My interest in the Tennessee Titans over the years has been that of a native and resident of the state, and little more. Sunday’s tilt with Indianapolis at Nissan Stadium in Nashville was my first NFL game since a trip to Dallas in 2007. (This completed a bucket-list achievement of sorts for me, as this is the first calendar year I’ve attended games in the NBA, NHL, MLB, and NFL.) And the experience left me with two distinct impressions.

First of all, the women. If the crowd — more than 65,000 — wasn’t half female, at least 40 percent of the fans at Nissan stadium were missing a Y chromosome. (One of them was new Nashville mayor Megan Barry, sworn in just two days earlier.) For a sport overstuffed with testosterone and traumatic injuries, there is a tremendous segment of “the fairer sex” passionately devoted to the enterprise. Sitting right next to me was a woman at least 50 years old . . . and her mother. Not a man in the mix. I find this compelling because of all we here about dads and particularly moms unwilling to subject their sons to football’s violence. If so, these moms seem perfectly willing to cheer on someone else’s son.

Then there were the video boards. Behind each end zone at Nissan Stadium is what amounts to a television that runs the entire width of the field. The screens are so big, and the images so clear, that it felt at times like the watch party of the century . . . just with 22 men down on the field occupying themselves with something or other. Football, we know, is made for television. Even at NFL stadiums on Sunday.

The game? It was memorable. Making his home debut, Tennessee’s rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota led the Titans to 27 unanswered points after the Colts took an early 14-0 lead. But the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner tossed a fourth-quarter interception that allowed Andrew Luck and friends to retake the lead. Mariota led another comeback, but rookie fullback Jalston Fowler was stuffed on a two-point conversion attempt with 47 seconds left, giving Indianapolis a 35-33 win.

I’m told there was something called a Blood Moon Sunday night. It must have been in the shape of a football.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Forget Nashville

CREDIT: Clewisleake | Dreamstime.com

Nashville has treated Memphis like Little Brother for as long as I can remember, so sometimes it’s easy to forget that Memphis is the bigger city — just barely. It won’t be that way for much longer, according to 2014 population data recently released by the Census Bureau. Right now, Memphians outnumber Nashvillians by only about 20,000. Nashville’s population is growing and ours is just … sitting there. It dropped by .25 percent last year — not a lot, but obviously we would prefer that the population grow, not shrink.

So, we’ve got some work to do. But we already knew that. Of course, the public policy and urban planning experts in our daily paper’s comment section claim to have exclusive insights into where folks are going and why, but that’s a topic for another day.

So Nashville’s finally poised to surpass Memphis. Big deal. Enjoy this cookie as a token of my not caring.

As a Memphian, I know I’m supposed to roll my eyes and say, “Ugh, Nashville … the worst! More like Trashville, right? ‘It City’? Are you sure they didn’t mean to say, ‘It’s shitty?'”

Hating on Nashville is as much a part of life in Memphis as jaywalking, waiting in line at Jerry’s, or getting heat exhaustion at the Elvis Week candlelight vigil. Rumor has it there’s a secret ingredient in our delicious water that allows the Nashville hate to flow more freely.

Meh. I can’t do it. I don’t hate Nashville anymore. In fact, to paraphrase one of my favorite Don Draper lines, I don’t think about it at all.

Sorry, no time. Too busy enjoying Memphis.

Standing on the top floor of a BBQ Fest mega-tent, sipping a Memphis Made kÖlsch as the sun slipped behind our giant glass pyramid newly filled with alligators and tourists and hunting supplies, the last thing on my mind was “Oh man, I wonder what Nashville is doing right now!”

Clewisleake | Dreamstime.com

When I was waving my Growl Towel and yelling “FIRST TEAM DE-FENSE” at the tippy-tip-top of FedExForum, I never paused to imagine what the fans chant at Predators games. If they chant anything at all.

As I bounce from barre class to brunch at Second Line to a hair appointment at Gould’s or a matinee at Studio on the Square, I don’t ask myself what in Nashville compares to Overton Square.

Remind me, why are we “rivals” again? The two cities have little in common beyond the highway that connects them. Nashville is “country” and Memphis is “soul.” Nashville’s brand-new, never-worn, and Memphis is gently used one-of-a-kind vintage. Emphasis on one-of-a-kind. Think about it: What do they have that we don’t have or even want for that matter? An eponymous TV show? Been there, done that, would rather not talk about it. Jack White? By all means, they can have him — and Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman too. A neighborhood called SoBro? Nah, bruh. The Titans? LOL. Trader Joe’s? It’s just a grocery store, y’all. Yeah, I said it. (If anyone from TJ’s happens to be reading this: Just kidding! We’d love a location in Memphis. Pretty please. ASAP. Thanks.)

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” As a city whose unofficial motto is “Memphis vs. Errrbody,” we could probably benefit from President Roosevelt’s advice. Let’s compare Memphis today to five, 10 years ago. Maybe the population is stagnant, but Memphis is growing in a different way. And it’s been a thrill to witness. Entire neighborhoods are being reborn. We’re figuring out how to turn old, forgotten things like the Tennessee Brewery, Hotel Chisca, and the Crosstown building into new, useful things.

Every time I cross a “New Restaurant To Try” off my list, another one opens. More touring bands and musicians are playing in Memphis instead of just flying over en route to bigger cities. We’ve got a basketball team that owns the fourth-longest streak of postseason appearances in the NBA. We even have a respectable — nay, good — college football team now! Around this time next year we’ll have an IKEA, an H&M, and a Cheesecake Factory. Scoff all you want at chain corporate retail and dining, but the money their employees earn spends just the same as anybody else’s. Those brands would not be expanding here if they didn’t see potential.

Potential, in Memphis? Believe it! Once we learn how to enjoy having nice things instead of waiting for them to be taken away from us, watch out. The New York Times might not be ready to christen Memphis the “It City,” but that’s not really our style. It kinda sounds like a jinx, to be honest.

Memphis doesn’t need a rival. The past is our only rival, and we’re kicking its ass. Congrats to you, Nashville. You’re off the hook.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and digital marketing strategist.